U.S. Auto Sales: Germany’s luxury carmakers fared particularly well in August

New vehicle sales soared in August to one of the highest monthly totals in the last decade – with sales exceeding 1.5 million vehicles.

Volkswagen’s premium carmaker Audi achieved the best month in history – with sales up by 22.1 percent to 17,101 vehicles. Audi says total sales year-to-date have increased 14.5 percent to 116,066 new cars.

The Q7 luxury SUV posted a gain of over 25 percent (1,859 units sold), Q5 increased by 6.1 percent.
In the upper level category (A6, A7, A8 and Q7) the German automaker announced strong results with an increase of 11 percent year-to-date and 26 percent of the Audi year-to-date sales gain.

BMW, the largest premium carmaker in the world said overall the BMW Group (including Mini vehicles) sold 32,220 vehicles, an increase of 5.5 percent from the 30,546 vehicles sold in the same month a year ago.

BMW brand only vehicles increased by 11 percent in August for a total of 27,214 new units – up from 24,523 vehicles sold in August, 2013. Year to date sales of BMW brand vehicles are up 11, 6 percent, the Munich based carmaker said in an official press release.

Daimler AG ’s Mercedes-Benz reported record-breaking August sales, with sales of 27,078 new units – a 9,4 percent increase compared to 24,761 vehicles sold the same month last year.
Including 1,334 new Smart vehicles and 1,880 units for Sprinter Vans, the German carmaker sold 30,292 new vehicles – up 11.6 percent from the 27,144 retails in August 2013.

“With the new C-Class rolling onto dealer lots and our first entry into the compact utility segment just weeks away, we’re in the early stages of a product offensive that will take the brand to its highest year on record.”

The E Class model took the lead with 6,481 units sold in August – followed by 5,151 units for the C-Class. Sales of the new S-Class high end model were extremely high – up by 312.2 percent to 1,855 new units.
Daimler said it sold 736 AMG high-performance models in August.

According to the Autodata Corp., last month BMW boosted incentives by 45 percent from a year earlier – 30 percent at Mercedes and 71 percent at Audi.

Bloomberg reports that spending by vehicle averaged almost $5,000 at BMW ($4,912 ), $4,189 for Mercedes-Benz and $3,236 for VW’Audi.